Instant messaging has become a widespread means of communication. Instant messaging is particularly useful where only a short series of exchanges between a first individual and a second individual may be all that is necessary to obtain desired information. In these situations, instant messaging offers several advantages over other, more traditional communication mechanisms, such as voice calls. In particular, instant messaging eliminates the need to locate and dial a telephone number and wait for a call to initiate, and it also eliminates a potential concern of the calling party that the telephone call may be an interruption to the called party. Moreover, convention has dictated that an instant message (IM) user is not necessarily expected to initiate an IM conversation with the pleasantries associated with a telephone call, such as asking the called party how they are doing or other personal inquiries of a similar nature, which, while socially desirable, may be an impediment to obtaining the information desired by the IM user in a timely manner.
Consequently, instant messaging has become widespread in many different contexts. For example, while in the past a website would publish a telephone number for consumers to call in the event that the consumer had a question, it is now quite common for website operators to offer support through IM sessions that can be initiated by the consumer by a simple click of a mouse.
However, instant messaging has not necessarily evolved to include functionality that would be desirable given the increasing prevalence of instant messaging as a means of communication. For example, in the situation of a website operator providing customer support via an IM session, it would be beneficial to a consumer if a first-level support technician could transfer an ongoing IM session to a designated third user, such as a second-level support technician, in the event that the first-level support technician cannot provide adequate support to the consumer. Moreover, in addition to an ability to transfer the IM session to the second-level support technician, it would be beneficial if the second-level support technician could be provided with some contextual information about the nature of the IM session either prior to or after accepting a request to transfer the IM session, so that the second-level support technician is able to quickly provide the necessary support to the consumer.
Conventionally, when an IM is sent toward a recipient, one of several different actions may be performed by the IM system. If the IM system determines that the recipient currently has an IM client application running on a computing device, the IM system may push the IM to the client IM application, where the IM may be displayed on a display, irrespective of whether the recipient is available to respond to the IM or not. Alternately, if the IM system determines that the recipient does not currently have a client IM application running on a computing device, the IM system may store the IM in a message log associated with the recipient. The IM may subsequently be delivered to the client IM application when the recipient later runs the client IM application on the computing device. In either event, the sender of the IM awaits a response from the recipient, not knowing if the response will be provided instantaneously or days later. In some situations, it may be desirable to both the sender of the IM and the recipient if the IM system were capable of determining whether the recipient was available to respond to the IM, and if not, to automatically forward the IM to a designated third user and to initiate an IM session between the third user and the first user so that the first user can obtain the desired information from the third user while the second user is unavailable to respond.